Page 85 of The House of Cross

I shuffled forward in the deep snow, peered into the scope, and saw thick firs, sheer rock, and ice high up the side of the crag. My stomach turned over.

“She could not have been up there,” I said. “Not alive.”

“I know,” Fagan said. “But I knew you wouldn’t believe me unless you saw it with your own eyes.”

“It had to have been a mistake,” I said. “Or Maestro tossed her phone out of a plane. Or her.” The thought almost made my knees buckle.

“Go back?” she asked.

“Where’s that lumber camp?”

“Far. We’d never make it back tonight. Like I said, you’re better coming at it from the west side of the park.”

“What about that abandoned mine?”

“It’s a ways too, but I know a spot where you can look at it from up high.”

Three hours later, as I was feeling like I’d wrestled a tiger while running a marathon, Fagan finally stopped her sled. We were up high, looking almost due south across a great expanse of snowy wilderness.

Again the Mountie set up her spotting scope and looked through it. After several minutes, she stood back and said, “You should see the outline of the old mine building there.”

I pushed up the visor of my helmet and looked through the scope. I saw a distant snow-covered hilltop and the suggestion of a building wavering like a mirage. I was about to stand up when I caught movement near the building.

I put my left mitt over my left eye to see better. At first I saw nothing, then I clearly spotted movement.

“There’s someone there,” I said.

“There is not,” Fagan said.

“Moving right to left away from the building. Take a look.”

I stepped back to let her peer through the scope again. She was there for several long moments before she said, “I do see something moving. I can’t say it’s a man.”

“What else could it be?”

“Moose? Elk?”

When Fagan stood up, I said, “Can we get closer? Check?”

The Mountie thought a moment. “I think there is a trail to the mine. But it’s older than the ones we were on. And as I remember, there’s warnings for sleds to stay out because there’s still mine debris on it—tailings, pieces of pipe, and old cables that could snag our runners.”

“We need to check.”

Fagan looked up at the clear blue sky and finally nodded. “We’ll be back at the Meacham trailhead around midnight, but I’m game if you are.”

“More than game,” I said.

She took us south for another hour. The sun was getting low in the southwestern sky when we reached a series of long, linked, snow-covered alpine meadows and stopped to refuel.

“We get to the end of this chain of parks, we should be able to get a good view of that old mining area before dark,” she said. “Then it’s a long slog out.”

“I’m ready for it.”

Fagan shifted in her saddle as if to start again, then pulled off a mitt, unzipped her coverall, and got out her binoculars. She pushed up her visor and peered ahead down through the meadows and then behind us.

“We’ve got company,” she said.

“Really?” I said, pivoting on my machine. Seven snowmobiles about a half a mile behind us were roaring our way.

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